Gone
by Laspettra
Summary: After the cage, George rushes to the hospital to find Nina. Annie is there too, but Mitchell is gone, and it falls to George to break Annie's heart once more. The aftermath of Mitchell's betrayal, before he shows up at HH for the last time.
1. Chapter 1

Finally, _finally_, after much frantic pleading and hand-wringing, they had agreed to let him see her. Just for a few minutes. They were preparing the theatre for surgery. He tore through the doors to Nina's bedside, trying to take in the sight of her small, still, pale body, stretched out on the hospital bed, wires and tubes trailing in all directions. She was sleeping now, under sedation. He fumbled to grasp her fingers, lifeless but warm, a sign of life, like the constant beep of the heart monitor. Annie reached across the bed to place a cold hand over his and he spared her a glance to communicate his gratitude.

In a breath, he felt her arms encircle his neck, the weight of her head against his shoulders, her soft curls brushing his cheek. It was strangely soothing to feel the icy coolness of her ghostly form pressed against him, and he wrapped his arms around her, closing his raw, tired eyes and letting the heat drain from his chest. Like slipping into a cold bath.

Suddenly, the cold sensation melted away and he realised she had released him. He opened his eyes.

She offered him a watery smile, as her eyes drifted over his shoulder, towards the doors. But there was no one else waiting there. Her disappointment was painful to him.

She turned large, doleful brown eyes to his. "Mitchell?" she asked, fighting to hold back a fresh wave of tears.

George felt his own eyes re-filling as he shook his head. "Gone," he managed to croak, hoarsely. He took a step towards her, meaning to hug her again, but she put her hands up in front of her and stepped back.

"Gone?" she choked.

George nodded. "With Herrick."

"Herrick!" she gasped, clutching at her chest and reeling backwards. She grasped hold of the rails of Nina's bed to steady herself. Her eyes searched his face, desperately seeking an assurance he could not give her.

The evidence of Mitchell's betrayal of George was his critically-ill girlfriend lying in the bed beside him, but here was Mitchell's betrayal of Annie, in all its appalling, bitter desolation. His heart ached for her. He could only gather her up in his arms once more. She put up no resistance, but in his arms this time she felt rigid and unyielding, distant. He planted a kiss amidst her curls and then looked down to discover that his arms were empty.

With a shuddering sigh, he turned towards the bed once more. Nina looked so peaceful, sleeping among all these beeping and hissing machines. He leant down and placed a kiss on her warm, damp forehead, then settled in a chair beside her bed. Clasping her small, limp hand in his, he said a silent prayer of thanks. Nina was his future now, Mitchell was the past. Mitchell was gone, gone with Herrick. Herrick, their enemy, the vampire whom he had ripped into little pieces to save Mitchell's life; Herrick, who had plunged a steak knife into Nina's back in a bid to rob him of everything that made his life worth living: his girlfriend, their child … _his best friend_. He closed his eyes against the pain of his traitorous heart. There was no way back now. Mitchell was dead to him. Gone. _Dead_.

He would find Annie later, or she would come and find him when she was ready. But right now, there was Nina, and there was the baby, and they needed him more.

And then suddenly the room was full of people again and he was being pushed aside, as the team of nursing staff wheeled Nina away to theatre and George was left alone in the empty room, staring after her.

ooooooooooooooooooo

The tea was cold now.

Who had given him this cup of tea? That nurse with the red hair? She'd been kind. She knew his name, seemed to know him. Had he met her before, on his daily rounds, shunting the patients from ward to ward? Or maybe she knew Nina. Had she told him that? It rang a bell. Her eyes had looked a little red when she'd spoken to him earlier, like she'd been crying.

It all seemed a blur, the last two hours. Corridors, plastic chairs, pacing, staring at the vinyl floor tiles, pacing some more, staring at that poster about the warning signs of stroke. They'd shown him into a small waiting room about half an hour ago, and that was probably when the cup of tea had appeared. He stared at it in his hand.

Where was Annie?

She had been with Nina when Nina awoke – or was it Annie who woke Nina up? He could not be sure it had not been Annie's doing, but that had been the moment that he knew Nina would pull through: Annie's beaming smile, the tears glistening in her eyes.

It had all seemed destroyed, laid waste; everything he had built up, invested in; everything he had cherished: his best friend, Nina, the baby, his future, all gone. But in Annie's smile he had known that something good remained, that Nina would live. She would make it, and so would they. They'd survive this, together. And Annie would be there too. She'd need them, now that Mitchell had gone. They needed each other. Somehow, they'd all come unstuck. Somehow it had all fallen apart, but that couldn't happen again.

And so now he waited, staring into a cup of cold tea, for the doctor to come and give him the news about the baby. She had not miscarried. Not yet. But she had suffered a terrible trauma, the knife had only just missed her uterus, they were very concerned for the baby, there needed to be an operation to stem the blood loss, stabilise the baby's heart rate.

George drained the remains of the cold tea and crumpled the plastic cup in his hands.

A sudden loud sob shattered the silence of the waiting room.

Startled, George leapt out of his chair. Annie, hugging her arms tightly, her head hanging, dark curls shaking with her shoulders as she sobbed. He blanched.

"A – Annie!" he stammered, struggling to form her name on his lips, struggling to breathe. "Wh –what's – happened?"

She made a hollow, wailing sound that seemed to pierce his heart like jagged shards of glass, and then she threw her head back to reveal dark eyes filled with fury.

"You knew!" she cried accusingly.

"Wha-?"

"You _knew_!" she spat at him, her eyes flashing dangerously.

"Knew-?" he repeated, puzzled.

"You knew about what Mitchell did! You knew that he killed all those people, the Box Tunnel Twenty! You _knew_ and you never said anything! You just let me carry on! Did you think I wouldn't work it out?"

He stared at her, aghast. Where had this come from? How had she found out?

"What, did you think I was too _thick_ to work it out?" she snarled, rising from her chair to face him angrily, her hands balled into fists.

He winced. He had not prepared himself for this. He put out his hands to her, to placate her anger. "No! No, Annie! It wasn't like that - "

She interrupted him with what sounded like a growl, steeped in rage. The lights flickered, and she was gone.

George gave a heavy, anguished sigh and covered his face with his hands, pressing his palms against his eyes. This was all he needed.

The door opened. He turned to see a doctor in scrubs striding towards him, clutching a clipboard. Nina's chart. He knew this doctor. Dr Collins, a big, ruddy-faced, rugby-playing fellow. Dr Collins smiled at him: a warm, cheerful smile; a good-news smile, not a pitying smile or one of those pale, helpless smiles you offer grieving relatives. The feeling of relief which surged through George's chest seemed to sweep his legs from under him. He reached for the chair to steady himself and dragged himself into it to sit down. Dr Collins was talking to him now. He was trying to focus. Collins was smiling. Wasn't he? He heard the word 'baby'. And then another smile. Was he still breathing?

"So – so – the baby – is going to be - " he swallowed " – okay?"

"It certainly looks that way. We will, of course, be keeping Nina and the baby under close observation for the next forty eight hours, but we are optimistic. Things certainly look very positive, remarkably so." He paused. "Nina was very lucky, George," he added in a softer voice. "We nearly lost her. She's a fighter, and so's your baby." And offering George a final smile, Dr Collins swept out of the room.

The nurse with the red hair was standing over him again, offering him another cup of tea. She was smiling sympathetically. George took the tea and acknowledged her kindness with a pale flicker of a smile.

"George?" she said gently. "George, do you have the contact details for Nina's family? Only, we've nothing on file, she never supplied any next-of-kin."

He shook his head dumbly. Then, finally processing her words, "No, no, she hasn't seen her family in years. They didn't get on."

The nurse nodded sadly. "How about you, then? Is there someone I can call for you?"

He thought of Annie. He thought of Mitchell. "No, no one."

"What about that friend of yours, the cleaner? Mitchell, isn't it?"

He stared at her grimly, eyes narrowed. Of course she'd have noticed Mitchell, he thought bitterly. Women always did.

"He's gone," he answered coldly.

The girl registered his tone and took it as her signal to withdraw.

He heard the door close lightly behind her.

He was alone once more, staring at the vinyl floor tiles, sipping on another cup of lukewarm tea.


	2. Chapter 2

ooooooooooooooooooo

Dawn, and the sky was just beginning to change from an oppressive slate grey to a slightly lighter shade of grey, equally oppressive.

George drew his legs from under the covers and sat up. He eyed the kettle on the dresser suspiciously. A little cup filled with UHT milk pots, tubes of instant coffee and granulated sugar sat beside it on the plastic tray, a depressing reminder of Annie's absence.

Three nights now he had stayed here, at this rather shabby sea-front B&B, but he had not seen her since that first night in the hospital. He thought he had heard her in his room last night, her sobs penetrating his uneasy sleep, but by the time he roused himself enough to switch on the bedside lamp, and peered into the shadowy corners of the room, she had gone. His heart ached for her. Not only was she having to deal with Mitchell's betrayal, but his too.

He had known all along, but said nothing. He had just let her blunder on with her 'investigation', probing the devastation of each victim's murder, the lives unfulfilled, the personal tragedies of the bereaved, the nightmares they suffered. She had wanted to prove Mitchell innocent. The horrible irony of it! And all along, he had known. Not for certain. Not … _absolutely_…

He was fooling himself. He hadn't wanted to admit to himself what he had known all along.

Hadn't he hoped she'd give it up, get bored with it, move onto something else? He groaned. That wretched policewoman, though, had been like a dog with a bone. How was it she had been so immune to Mitchell's charms, unlike almost every other woman he had ever met?

He felt the bed sink a little and turned his head.

_Annie! _

She smiled wanly at him but the effort of doing so seemed to pain her and she dropped her curly head to gaze miserably into her lap.

"I'm so sorry, Annie," he said, after a few awkward moments of silence.

"How did you find out?" she said in a low voice, barely more than a whisper. She raised her head with a pitiful sigh. "I mean, did he _tell_ you?"

George shook his head. "We never spoke about it." He winced. Mitchell had wanted to speak about it, hadn't he? He had shut him down, shut him out. He couldn't handle knowing what Mitchell had done, so he had erected a wall of silence between them. He gritted his teeth, forcing himself to open up to her. She deserved to hear this.

"I guessed. Do you remember when we left Windsor Terrace?"

Annie looked at him quizzically, frowning. "Not really…. I forgot a lot of things in... _that_ _place_. I remember there was someone at the house, a stranger. I was frightened…"

"It was Mitchell, Annie. Not - _our_ - Mitchell. The _other_ Mitchell. I'd seen him like that before – not – _quite_ – like that," he added hastily. "But … I guessed. And then later, when I heard on the news…"

Annie nodded numbly.

"I never asked him and he never told me but …" He couldn't bring himself to look at her as the words faltered on his lips. It sounded so inadequate.

How could he have excused Mitchell the Box Tunnel Twenty? When had he reached the point where he was so desperate for Mitchell's friendship, for the co-dependent self-justification that it offered them both, that he could overlook – even _accept_ – such heinous murders? And imagining that ignoring what Mitchell had done could somehow erase it? How pathetic! How shameful. Like an indelible stain on his conscience. Had he offered Mitchell forgiveness, had he and Mitchell even discussed the murders, borne the full, terrible weight of what he had done together, he might have been able to look Annie in the eyes now. Some friend he had been!

Her icy hand slid over his. Hope swelled his heart. He raised his eyes to meet hers.

"I forgive you," she said, the corners of her mouth twitching into a watery smile.

He smiled broadly, thanking her silently. Those words were like a soothing balm to his tortured mind.

They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes.

"Where have you been?" he asked her, suddenly curious. "I've been worried about you."

She shrugged. "All over." She flicked him a bashful glance. "Bristol," she admitted.

"Bristol?" he repeated, his voice rising. "To – to look for Mitchell?"

She shrugged again and shook her head. "No. Maybe. I don't know! I thought if I could find them, get my hands on Herrick - "She made a throttling gesture with her hands and narrowed her eyes fiercely.

"Oh, Annie!" he groaned, trying to disguise his pity with exasperation.

"I went back to the house," she said, brightening. "The old house. _My_ house."

He stared at her, mouth gaping.

"Only it's _not_ my house any more," she continued. "They've put it up for sale."

"Who has? Owen?"

"No! No… With Owen confessing to my murder, and being locked up in a mental hospital, he can't inherit my share of the property. Not allowed to profit from murder and all that. So, the executors of my estate – my parents – have forced Owen's family to sell it. After all, I put in a large deposit to buy that house; it's only right my parents should get it back. So! That's _that_!" She grinned. It was a false kind of cheerfulness, but George indulged her.

"Pink house, gone. Owen, gone. Sort of. Mitchell ..._Gone_." The word seemed to linger on her lips, as if she did not want to release it, as if to do so was to make it true. And the word seemed to fill the silence between them like an unspoken lament.

"Was he _ever_ really our friend, George?" she blurted suddenly. "_Ever_? I mean, he said he loved me, but how can someone who _devours_ 20 people in a murderous rampage –" she took a steadying breath "- how can they feel _love_ for _anyone_?"

He had been expecting that question, of course. He knew she must have spent the last three days churning it round and round her mind, twisting her heart in knots over it. But he had no answer. He thought he had understood Mitchell; he thought theirs had been a friendship based on some genuine feeling, on _love_, the human kind. But had he got it so terribly wrong? Had he – and Annie – expected too much of Mitchell? Was Mitchell even _capable_ of human feeling? Of _being_ human? Had they been wrong to demand it of him?

And _yet!_ He remembered Mitchell's grief over losing Annie. He remembered how Mitchell had covered up for him, had protected him, had seen off the vampires that wanted to beat him to within in inch of his life. He remembered how things had been _before_ Mitchell showed up in his werewolf-life … And he remembered all those times at the pink house in Totterdown… _all_ those times. They had been friends and it had _felt_ real.

But he couldn't square _that_ Mitchell with the Mitchell who had tried to reawaken Herrick's vampire-nature, offering him that policewoman to feed on; the Mitchell who had held a stake to his neck and threatened to kill him …

He looked helplessly at Annie and shook his head. "I don't know, Annie. I don't know."

ooooooooooooooooooo


End file.
